Their Lives
by Kaitie McDonahue
Summary: Fred reflects on how he almost lost Roxy. Companion to Infinitely Less, Obviously More; Realizations of A Malfoy; You Jump, I Jump, Jack; Can We Say Destiny?; and Destructiveness Leads to Disaster. Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.


Fred wished he knew what to do. All he saw was his wife, Martha, keening silently over a gravestone.

He knew he shouldn't think it, but he couldn't help it: that gravestone was the reason he'd been able to marry Martha in the first place. How could he be as upset as she over it?

Then again, her first husband had committed suicide. That could never be easy to deal with. It wasn't, he knew.

He watched as Martha touched her hand lightly to the grave marker, caressing the rough edges of granite that had never been sanded.

Thank Merlin that Roxy's gravestone wasn't near it, that she didn't have one. Even though she'd wanted one.

He remembered when his dad had appeared on his front step two years ago, face ashen and eyes red. Words tumbling out of his mouth that hadn't seemed to make sense to Fred. How could his own sister, his _twin, _have done that? She didn't want to die, she couldn't. She loved life. She was Roxanne Weasley, for Merlin's sake. She didn't slit her wrists.

And what a way to go, Fred thought. A Muggle way. Why hadn't she just Avada Kedavra-ed herself? Instead, she hurt herself. All that blood, pain, dizziness.

He was feeling dizzy himself now, his hands clenched into fists. He couldn't help but be angry with her. What would he have done with his best friend, his confident, his pillar of strength, gone?

He sunk to the bottom of a tree in the cemetery, still close to Martha.

Roxanne had looked so different against the backdrop of the white sheets of a hospital bed in St. Mungo's. She had gotten their mother's dark, chocolate skin while he'd been cursed with his father's pasty white skin and freckles. Fred never would've said that Roxy had ever looked pale, not once in her life, until then.

She'd had a hard year; he could understand that. A messy divorce, learning that the reason she'd miscarried so many times was because she was barren - the cause of the divorce. Her ex-husband was a scumbag; he'd left her high and dry once he learned she couldn't have kids. And she'd sunk into a depression.

She hadn't told anyone. Roxy had always preferred to deal with her problems on her own. Help others rather than help herself. Fred just didn't like telling people his problems, thinking they made him weak. It was a profound difference between their personalities: the Hufflepuff and the Slytherin. It was why he hadn't admitted to Martha just how shaken up he was, just how much he hadn't wanted to go to the cemetery with her today.

He could still see Roxy lying on that bed in the hospital, fast asleep, bandages on her left arm. The whispered voices of the healers chorused in his ears: she meant business...slit her wrist vertically along the vein...too much blood loss...donors...a thirty percent chance of seeing the morning..."

And he got angry as he waited by her bedside for her to wake up. Fred could remember it all too well. Who cared if she wanted to off herself? How did they have the right to tell her not to? It was her life, not theirs. She could live it however she wanted. It may affect others, other people who loved and cared about her, who were devastated and shocked when they had to rush to the hospital, but it was _her _life. Roxy's. No one else's. And if it wasn't their life, what right did they have to say whether it continued or not?

Fred wondered if Martha had ever thought the same, cruel things about the man who's coffin was six feet beneath where she knelt. He glanced over at her, sitting peacefully at her late husband's gravestone, her mouth moving as she told him how Alex was growing up, Fred knew. No, he decided. Martha never thought those things. She couldn't. Her voice was one of kindness, passion, benevolence. She didn't have dark thoughts unless her teenage son got caught with Mia Malfoy, Fred's niece and his stepson's best friend, in detention or a broom closet. She didn't even yell when Fred left his dirty socks on the bedroom floor and not in the hamper.

But oh, Fred sighed and let his head collapse against the rough tree bark, the friction soothing an itch on his neck. Wasn't he right? He couldn't dictate how other people lived their lives, not even how his sister lived hers. Or didn't live it. He couldn't do anything about her life, her choices. He could try his best, but he couldn't choose how she lived, what she did. He had no control over it.

It was a scary feeling, to realize that not a single person had control over life and death. Unless they chose to end everything themselves.

Was that what Roxy had done? Try to get some semblance of control into her hands, her life, after everything else had gone haywire, upside down?

Fred brushed his hair out of his eyes, urging his hands to stop shaking. They hadn't stopped shaking until Roxy had gotten out of the hospital over a year ago. She'd made a joke about it and Fred had felt his heart soar in hope that she was all better.

And then he'd seen the scars on her wrist again, and had crashed back down to earth.

How he hated Earth sometimes. All of its laws, natural rights: life, liberty, and property. What if you decided to get rid of one of those unalienable rights one day, like his sister had? Like Martha's late husband? Did it make the cosmic balance of the universe un-balanced? Or did it just have no effect? Could Roxy have well and truly died by her own hands and everything would be alright?

No, Fred decided vehemently. No, it couldn't. He would never have been alright. He would've been messed up until his own dying day and probably long after, rotting in hell for the crimes of thought and reason he would've committed in his grief. If Roxy had died, nothing would've ever been alright again.

Was this how his dad felt? Fred suddenly wondered. A twin dead, identity gone.

Fred just wanted everything normal again. He would never have believed that he retained any innocence still, now in his thirties, until his dad had appeared in his house, and brought him to the hospital to see his suicidal sister.

His suicidal sister.

Fred couldn't help it. He still wondered if anyone had the right to stop a person from committing suicide. Because if someone is truly that upset, that miserable, in this world, don't they deserve some form of happiness any way they can get it? All he wanted was for Roxy to be happy. If death meant happiness, shouldn't he support that? Other people would get hurt, him included, but Roxy would be happy. Right?

Right?

Fred wasn't sure he could do this. He wasn't sure he could continue to go through life, wondering if every time Roxy frowned she was about to leave him again. He wondered every time anyone frowned, from Martha and Alex to the man who brought the post on everyday but Sunday.

Alex, who didn't even know that his father had committed suicide and not been killed in a convenience store robbery. Poor kid. Fred was never one for keeping someone in the dark about the important facts of life, but as much as Fred loved him, he was never sure if Alex was 'his'. Alex was Martha's son, and the son of the dead man twenty feet in front of him, six feet below. Alex was his stepson, the boy he loved like a son, was his son in all sense of the word, among his other children. Shouldn't he know the truth?

But how do you say that? How do you tell someone that their father killed himself? And Fred knew that if he said anything on the subject, the words "maybe we don't have the right to stop people from doing that" would come tumbling out of his mouth.

Because maybe people didn't have the right to stop others from killing themselves. But Fred knew that he would've saved Roxy even if he thought he should let her go. He was too selfish to do otherwise. He needed his sister. It didn't matter if it was her life and she could do with it what she would. If he had a say, she'd always be with him. Just like Martha would, and his kids. He didn't know how he'd live without them. They were his family, the people who kept him going.

When had he stopped being one of the people to keep Roxy going?

* * *

**Little bit more depressing than usual...I wrote it back during election time when euthanasia was being discussed a lot. Remembered I had it and decided to post it. Please review!**


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